The
Trojan War
In Search of
a
Myth or Legend
Key Topic / Theme
At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the uninvited goddess of discord, Eris, tosses a
golden apple. When three goddesses fight over it, Zeus throws it off Mount Olympus.
It is found by Paris, prince of Troy, who gives it to the goddess Aphrodite in return
for her promise of the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. That woman is
Helen, wife of Menelaus. When she runs off to Troy with Paris, the Greeks and
Trojans go to war. The myth of the Trojan War may recall a historical military
encounter. According to the myth, after a ten-year siege, Troy is destroyed by
Odysseus's trick of the Trojan Horse. In the Iliad, Homer tells of a quarrel between the
general Agamemnon and the hero Achilles in the Greek camp in the ninth year of the
war.
The Decision of Paris
The story of the judgement of Paris is seminal to the study of Greek mythology,
because not only is it the seed from which so many myths arise, but also because it is
a paradigm of the complex world in which those myths reside. The story involves a
minor sea goddess, Thetis, and a mortal man, Peleus, who are about to wed. Zeus, it
seems, has heard a prophecy that a child of his, possibly by Thetis, will one day usurp
his throne. To prevent such a threat, Zeus marries off Thetis, to whom he is sexually
attracted, to a human prince, guaranteeing that any child of hers will be half-human
and thus no threat to his divinity. Alternatively, perhaps Zeus is simply punishing her,
as one variant account suggests, for refusing, out of loyalty to Hera, who raised her, to
yield to his sexual advances; or perhaps, according to another variant, he is rewarding
Peleus for his uncommon valour.
Zeus invites to the wedding all the gods and goddesses except one - Eris, the goddess
of strife, or discord. Naturally, she arrives uninvited and tosses at the assembled
guests a golden apple bearing the inscription "For the Fairest".
Three goddesses - Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite - quarrel over the apple. Determined
to preserve harmony, Zeus throws the apple down off Mount Olympus. It lands in a
field outside Troy, were Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, is tending sheep. Picking
up the apple, Paris is startled by the sudden appearance of the three goddesses, each of
whom asks for it, offering him a gift in exchange. Hera, queen of the gods, offers
power over all Asia Minor, but Paris will one day inherit his father's kingdom, so he
turns her down. Athene offers wisdom, but like many young men, Paris is sure that he
already possesses all the wisdom he needs. Aphrodite offers the love of the most
beautiful woman in the world, and, to a young man whose only company is a flock of
sheep, she clearly wins the prize. The goddesses, one exultant, the other two enraged,
disappear - perhaps it was a dream. Paris goes back to his sheep.
King Priam calls for his son, now old enough to assume some political
responsibilities, and sends him on his first diplomatic mission - to the home of
Menelaus, king of Sparta. Menelaus's wife, Helen, is the most beautiful woman in the
world because of her half-divine parentage. She is the daughter of a mortal woman,
Leda, and Zeus, who appeared to Leda in the form of a great white swan.
While Paris is a guest in Menelaus's home, Menelaus leaves for a brief trip of his
own. Left alone with Helen, Paris seduces her or perhaps abducts her, along with
some of Menelaus's treasure, and returns to Troy. Thus begins the Trojan War - ten
years of death and chaos, consequences of a bad choice.
The Historicity of Troy
Situated at the entrance of the Hellespont, the narrow sea link between the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea, Troy occupied a strategic location. Modern
archaeological evidence attests that, somewhere around 1250 BC, Troy Vii-A was
looted and burned by unidentified aggressors, possibly after a long siege.
The exact nature of the conflict that may have occurred between the Trojans and the
Mycenaean city-states is unknown. Various theories include a feud over dynastic
marriage; the pressure of migrations and/or invasions by the Dorians, another Greekspeaking people entering the region at the time; a population explosion in mainland
Greece that was unsupportable by the local economy; or a wave of migrations and/or
raids prompted by the same struggling economy. While we have no definitive
knowledge of the actual nature of the historical link between Troy and Mycenaean
Greece, we have every reason to accept some basis of historicity in the legends.
The Implications of the Story
The alternative versions of parts of the story of the judgement of Paris and the endless
sequels - including the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia, the destruction
of Troy, the death of Achilles, the murder of Agamemnon and Orestes' revenge, and
the wanderings of Odysseus, as well as many other tales - reflect the multiform and
open-ended nature of Greek myths.
The Timelessness of Myth
The myths occur in a timeless world, or at least they refuse to submit to the tests of
human chronology and logic. Consider, for example, Achilles, the child born of the
marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Goddesses, like human females, apparently carry their
offspring for nine months. Presumably, then, Achilles is born within a year of the
marriage. If, meanwhile, Paris's embassy to Menelaus begins several months after the
incident of the apple and lasts for a year, and even if it takes, as the myths attest, a
year for the Greeks to assemble their troops and another for the armada to set sail for
Troy, then Achilles would have been two years old when the war began and twelve
when it ended.
Conflict in Society and the Cosmos
On a social level, Zeus, god of family love and guest-host relationships, sanctifies
values that preserve the sacred institution of marriage, harmony within families, and
civilised modes of social and political exchange that maintain order. Paris making off
with Menelaus's wife while a guest in the Spartan king's home, violates these godordained relationships. When Priam, believing that honour and family love oblige him
to stand behind his son despite his poor judgement, refuses to abide by the prevailing
social norms, adhering instead to loyalty to the clan, the two systems clash.
Zeus is in command but not in control of the universe. He cannot by fiat decree
discord nonexistent: evil exists, and Zeus, like the rest of us, must cope with it.